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Implementation of an Open Source Webmail System
-- Freedom from the burden of supporting Microsoft Outlook --

Kiyoshi Sawada, Scott A. Hughes, Masato Higashiyama, Yasuyuki Nagano, Hiroshi Asai, Shinji Kishi

Department of Medical Informatics, Nagoya Daini Red Cross Hospital, Nagoya, Japan

The RisuMail Team, Tokyo, Japan

Prelude

The following is an English translation of a paper presented in Japanese by Kiyoshi Sawada at "The 23rd Joint Conference on Medical Informatics" held 22-23 November 2003 at the Japan Conference Center (Makuhari Messe) in Chiba, Japan. The main authors of this paper are the above staff (in blue) of the Nagoya Daini Red Cross Hospital. The paper was translated by Scott A. Hughes.

The original text of this paper can he found at the following URL.

http://www.na.rim.or.jp/~sawada_k/php/squirrelmail/jcmi2003/paper/

The following is the primary URL for this translation.

http://www.sahughes.net/papers/squirrelmail/jcmi2003/

Some minor contextual changes have been made to the paper in translation. Please do not make mirror copies of this document. Any reference to it should be made via a link to this URL. Quotes with the URL referenced are welcomed.

A version of the same text in Japanese which has been slightly edited post-publication with an alternative layout is available here.

http://www.sahughes.jp/papers/squirrelmail/jcmi2003/

This translation and all above publications have been made with Kiyoshi Sawada's permission.

Abstract

We had adopted Microsoft Outlook as our standard office email application within our organisation and provided end-user support for it over the years. However, Outlook is akward to configure, has the inconvenience of being only being able to send and receive email from a computer that has been pre-configured for specific users, and the relocation of personnel within the organisation and the need to move their data from one PC to another is a regular occurrence, creating numerous problems and a heavy work-load for the support staff.

Webmail is an alternative approach whereby email is sent and received via a web browser. This enables the sending and receiving of email from any computer anywhere, as long as the computer has a browser and is connected to the network. The webmail we utilised is SquirrelMail, an open source webmail application that supports the IMAP4 email protocol.

In order to resolve the array of problems that the use of Outlook inherently presented, we implemented a webmail system and have started providing this service to the medical staff within our hospital.

Keywords: Webmail, IMAP4, SquirrelMail, open source

1. Introduction

We had been using Microsoft Outlook as the official PC email client at our hospital since 1999. As of June 2003, we host approximately 500 PCs and service 1068 email accounts, however the inconvenience of only being able to send and receive email from a computer that has been pre-configured for specific users, the fact that configuration itself is awkward, and the regular occurrence of personnel relocation within the organisation and the need to move their data from one PC to another created numerous problems and a heavy work-load for the support staff.

In order to solve these problems, we introduced a webmail system in March 2003.

2. The Webmail System

2.1 What is Webmail?

Webmail is a system that enables the sending and receiving of email via a web browser such as Internet Explorer (IE), Netscape or Mozilla. With access to a web browser that is connected to the network, email can be sent and received anytime, anywhere. Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are examples of well-known webmail systems (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Webmail Screen

2.2 The Difference Between POP3 and IMAP4

Email is generally read and written using an email client installed on a PC terminal, such as Outlook or Eudora, using the POP3 protocol. POP3 performs a one-way transfer of email from the mail server to the email software on the PC.

Figure 2: POP3 Protocol
On the other hand, IMAP4 not only transfers email to the client software, but can also be used to create multiple folders for organised email storage in those folders on the server. By accessing a server with a webmail system, email can be read, written and sent from a PC web browser any where in the same way, irrespective of which PC is used.

Figure 3: IMAP4 Protocol

2.3 How Webmail Works

Webmail uses the IMAP4 protocol. The email client software for the IMAP4 protocol (see figure 3) is effectively provided by the webmail server.

The webmail server provides the fundamental functions for accessing email in the following way.

1. Communicates with the user's PC terminal using HTML (the user operates the PC terminal's web browser).
2. Authentication is performed by sending the email username and password entered during login. Successful authentication enables the user to then read, write and send email.
3. Email is read from a the user's own email box, and a list of incoming email is displayed on the web screen.
4. An individual email from the incoming list is selected to display the message.
5. Email is written from within the browser, sent to the server via the HTTP protocol and then sent out via SMTP.

In figure 4, the webmail server and email server are separate, however both functions can be performed by one server.

Figure 4: How Webmail Works

3. System Structure

3.1 What is SquirrelMail?

SquirrelMail is a standards-based open source webmail package written in PHP4, and has the following features.

1. It has very few requirements and is easy to configure and install.
2. All pages render in pure HTML 4.0 for maximum compatibility across browsers (JavaScript can also be used via option settings).
3. It has all the functionality seen in a standard email client, such as strong MIME support, address books and folder manipulation.
4. User oriented tools and extended functionality can be realised through the use of plugins.

SquirrelMail is distributed under the GPL (General Public License). As at February 2002, it was estimated that there were over 2 million corporate and individual SquirrelMail users worldwide, and current estimates are that this figure has since doubled several times over.

3.2 System Configuration

We built the system at our hospital on a single server with the following specifications and using a range of open source software.

CPU: Pentium 3, 1.2GHz x 2
RAM: 512MB
HDD: 120GB (RAID5)
OS: Red Hat Linux 7.2
HTTPD: Apache 1.3.28
MTA: Sendmail 8.12.9
IMAPD: UW IMAP 2002d
Script Language: PHP4.3.2
Database for Saving User Preferences: PostgreSQL 7.3.3

SquirrelMail features an interactive installer (see figures 5 and 6), simplifying system integration and server configuration. SquirrelMail is also internationalised, and Japanese can be selected as the default language.

Figure 5: SquirrelMail Interactive Installer (Organization Preferences)

Figure 6: SquirrelMail Interactive Installer (Database Settings)

4. Management

4.1 User Documentation

Before releasing this new service, we worked on documentation for the end-user staff which included an explanation of how webmail works and mention of any areas in which caution would be required or restrictions existed. This enabled us to prepare an environment where we could roll out the service with relatively little additional work. We prepared an online manual, "A Manual for Smooth Transition from Outlook to Webmail" in which we placed particular emphasis on an explanation of how to transfer email received with Outlook to webmail.

4.2 Problems Migrating from Outlook

In order to move email to the webmail system, we asked the users to forward the email data saved in Outlook as attachments, however migration of Outlook address data had to be performed manually by each individual. A SquirrelMail plugin has since been released that enables the import and export of address books via the CSV file format, which we will be using from hereon when transferring address book data in one direction or the other.

4.3 Problems in Using Webmail Concurrently with Outlook

The office PCs at our hospital were configured in a company group mode with enhanced security. In this mode, IMAP4 is not supported, and Outlook only supports POP3. Therefore, when email was read with Outlook the server's email box would be emptied, causing there to be no incoming mail listed when later accessed via webmail.

Conversely, any email received and moved to alternate mail folders using the webmail filtering function could not be read using Outlook as it was not compatible with the IMAP4 protocol required to access any folders located on the server other than the standard incoming mail folder.

As these issues arose, we made an announcement about these limitations and cautionary notes for using the two systems together.

In June 2003 we proceeded to reformat all the hospital's PC hard disks (thereby deleting the Outlook personal profile data), which further encouraged the use of webmail while we phased Outlook out.

4.4 Issues Regarding the HTML mailto tag

Originally we had a staff mail address list published in the hospital's internal web site. It was convenient for anyone to be able to simply click on the HTML mailto tag of the email address so that the PC's Outlook email editor would open up and email could be readily sent off. However, as the number of webmail users increased, this function causing the POP-based Outlook email client to start up threatened to ultimately cause confusion. To avoid confusion this method of publishing email addresses internally was ceased, resulting in the users losing the convenience of this POP email client function.

Email can now be sent by selecting email addresses from a shared email address book within the webmail client. We are also considering configuring the hospital PCs' web browsers so that the page for sending email from webmail can also be started up via the original method of accessing the staff email address list on the internal web site and clicking on the mailto HTML tags.

5. Operation

5.1 Web Access Statistics

With the service beginning at March 2003 the average number of webmail logins was 314 per day, with an average of 6400 logged page accesses via http.

5.2 Webmail Usage

The POP3 email software such as Outlook had the following limitations.

Because email usage was only possible on pre-configured PCs for each particular user, email could not be accessed while other individuals were using the user's PC.
Users with their own PCs in the medical offices were unable to access email from other parts of the hospital.

However, with webmail, the very same email environment could be accessed at any time from anywhere, and this this was an aspect that the hospital staff highly praised. Additionally, the saving and removal of files in each user's individual folders (home directory) is possible using SquirrelMail's file manager plugin, relieving the necessity of saving files to media such as floppy disks and MOs in order to transfer them from one computer to another.

5.3 Support and Management

Under our original Outlook support system, calls to support, and the requirement of support members to attend to the user on-site was a frequent occurrence. Tasks typically involved the following.

1. Initial configuration for new mail use.
2. Moving of Outlook personal profiles to PCs where staff are transferred during staff relocation.

Freedom from the burden of such support tasks was a welcome change for the support staff.

6. Conclusions and Observations

While webmail presents a problem with the limitation of hard disk space for individual data on the server, support staff are freed from PC administration and support tasks, while the users enjoy great improvement in convenience.

We currently have the following short-term objectives.

Enable usage of the webmail system from outside the hospital via a secure communication channel (SSL).
Develop plugins that support the functioning of and utilise hospital information system data.

7. SquirrelMail Japan Official Site

The URL for SquirrelMail Japan, the official SquirrelMail site in Japan, is http://www.squirrelmail.jp/. SquirrelMail Japan was established as a communication and download hub for people and organisations using or wishing to use SquirrelMail in Japanese.

References:

[1] SquirrelMail Japan, http://www.squirrelmail.jp/, 2003.
[2] Hirokawa, et al., "Completely Conquering PHP4" (PHP4 Tettei Kouryaku), Softbank Publishing, 2002.
[3] Hirokawa, et al., "Completely Conquering PHP4, Practical Edition" (PHP4 Tettei Kouryaku Jissen-hen), Softbank Publishing, 2002.

Paper: Implementation of an Open Source Webmail System - Freedom from the burden of supporting Microsoft Outlook,
First Publication (English Version) Fri Jul 9 2004

Scott A. Hughes

Last modified: Thu Sep 9 00:24:22 JST 2004

Implementation of an Open Source Webmail System -- Freedom from the burden of supporting Microsoft Outlook --